Spain and Portugal now remained
fiercely Catholic.
[Sidenote: Austria]
Somewhat similar was the case of Austria. Terrifying fear of the
advancing Turk, joined with the political exigencies of the Habsburg
rulers, threw that duchy with most of its dependencies into the hands
of the pope. If the bishop of Rome, by favoring the Habsburgs, had lost
England, he had at least saved Austria.
[Sidenote: Poland and Ireland]
Ireland and Poland--those two extreme outposts of the Roman Catholic
Church in Europe--found their religion to be the most effectual
safeguard of their nationality, the most valuable weapon against
aggression or assimilation by powerful neighbors.
SUMMARY OF THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
By the year 1570 the profound religious and ecclesiastical changes
which we have been sketching had been made. For seventy-five years more
a series of wars was to be waged in which the religious element was
distinctly to enter. In fact these wars have often been called the
Religious Wars--the ones connected with the career of Philip II of
Spain as well as the subsequent dismal civil war in the Germanies--but
in each one the political and economic factors predominated.
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